Tag Archives: sequel

Merry Christmas, all! As well as Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, and an excellent Ramadan, Boxing Day, Yule, Saturnalia, Festivus, Officially Sanctioned Non-Religious Winter-esque Holiday, or whatever else brings you indoors this season and causes you to get nostalgic with family and friends, drink, eat, and exchange gifts and good will.

I don’t wanna judge. Me, I’m celebrating Christmas with me and mine. As such, posts may well be infrequent (much drinking and writing to do), but as posts have already been infrequent, I thought it prudent to say something about why I haven’t written in three months.

I’m well. Nobody is dying. Family is good. Work is looking up. I’m in a generally up-beat mood most of the time. But not everything is coming up roses.

Change has come to my life. My wife and I have split up (sort of, it’s complicated). This has somewhat adversely affected my progress upon the new novel, the sequel, my scripts, short stories, and marketing for the stuff I’ve already put out. It’s not the only reason I haven’t written. There is a lot of my own laziness, procrastination, writer’s block, and lack of a truly professional writer’s work ethic in there as well, but our separation and eventual divorce (as well as the associated issues with selling a house and moving) does color most of that. I am not blaming her. My lack of progress is upon me, but as many of you have been faithful fans, and as I have not held up my end of that bargain, I apologize.

As for the whys and what happeneds, that is a private matter between she and I. The whole story (or a version of it) requires the purchase and pouring of multiple drinks in person. My ex, my professional life, and most especially my kids deserve the grace of discretion. What’s important is that we are both dedicated to our children, we get along, and we hope to one day be past this enough to be friends and take joy in each other’s futures, loves, and accomplishments.

What does this mean for you? Pretty much nothing. It’s just an apology and explanation. But here is what I will give you: an update and a gift!

Update first. I am on the last chapter of Book One in Lancers Into The Light, the sequel to A Sword Into Darkness. I anticipate Book Two going faster (I hope, anyway) and its a bit shorter. I originally wanted to be done and launch around year’s end, but that’s not gonna happen. I still would like to launch in the next quarter, and possibly do a launch party at RavenCon. To facilitate that, I will be looking to getting feedback from Beta Readers of the first half while I’m finishing the second. If’n you’d like to participate and give me some constructive feedback, drop me a line and some contact info here, by e-mail, Twitter, Google +, or Facebook.

I’m also working on a short for the Jim Baen Memorial Writing contest, but mum’s the word on that for now.

As for a present, last year I won the Liberty Island Holiday Writing contest with a little story about war, robots, Christmas, and French Meat Pies. I’ll share that with all of you here later today or tomorrow, and I hope you all enjoy it.

First, “me” business: I finished the second half of Chapter 4 on Demi-God / Dattoo, which was a tough one because it’s a lot of technobabble justification for what comes before and after. I may end up re-vamping or cutting most of it, but it’s on paper/pixels at least.

Finishing up the files for my launch of “The Commuter” — COMING SOOOOON!

I have finally started writing Chapter 1 of Lancers Into the Light, the sequel to A Sword Into Darkness! If you would like to be Tuckerized/Red-Shirted/Die in a gloriously fictional manner, hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, or in the comments below! And you guys are gonna love Huli.

And, I hit on a couple of very nice posts about my writing! First, there’s a nice mention for my story “Within This Horizon” from Riding the Red Horse over on Takimag. And, pleasantly surprising, Mark Ciocco of the Kaedrin Weblog has put me among his nominees for this year’s Best Novel Hugo Award! Thank you, Mark! And you would all be wise to go check out his excellent blog over there.

Now, convention stuff. Here are the updates!

MystiCon, Roanoke, VA – February 27-March 1; Rejected, all full up.

RavenCon, Richmond, VA – April 24-26; Rejected, but on the waiting list. I’m probably still going. Oughta be fun.

DragonCon, Atlanta, Georgia – September 4-7 (Yeah, right, this is like San Diego Comicon East); Rejected! Their form rejection email even had .midi file of a donkey laughing at me.

Capclave, Washington DC – October 9-11; Application still under review

– There’s whole bunches of stuff to catch you up on, so I’m turning down the effervescent charm and wit, turning up the maximum information flow (while still remaining effervescently witty and charming. Handsome too. It’s a curse).

– A Sword Into Darknesshas now topped over 200 reviews on Amazon and sits at 4.5 stars overall with 123 5-stars and 58 4-stars, alongside a whole buncha real nice write-ups between ’em. If you needed an excuse to get yourself a copy, that’s a pretty good one. I’m still continually surpised about the folks that are reluctant to give it a try because of its indie-published beginnings. It’s good, folks. Trust the hoi polloi.

– Speaking of good, I just listened to the first half of the A Sword Into Darkness audiobook from ACX and Will Perez of Sci-Fi Publishing, and it’s like experiencing a brand new story. It really comes alive, and even though I wrote the damned thing, it’s like I’m just discovering it. If you’ve read it, but haven’t heard it, you gotta! And if you haven’t read it or lent it to your friends, ummm, see the bullet above.

– REMOcontinues to chug right along, though it has not had the explosion of popularity that ASID had. Is it because it’s short stories? A relatively short collection? Not as much advertising as ASID had from third parties? I dunno. It has gotten great reviews (4.8 stars in 6 reviews) on Amazon, but it has not made it above 7000 in sales ranking yet. It has more than paid for the investment in its cover from 99Designs, so I’m happy about that, but I would love for it to do ASID numbers. If you haven’t tried it out, I urge you to give it a shot, or to recommend it to your friends. And I’m also producing an audiobook on ACX for it as well, with the talented Heidi Mattson of VO Hollywood reading. It would make your perfect commute companion!

– REMO remains Amazon Kindle exclusive, but ASID has turned out to be a dirty little book that gets around to all the e-book sites. Shameful. But apparently the elder book has been a bad influence on the innocent story collection, and they will soon both cheapen themselves for all the world to see in an internet wide sale! I am shocked and you should be too. In fact, you should tell all of your friends about it and urge everyone to get their own copies during the sale so you can tell them youself how dissapointed you are that such good books would just put themselves on the streets for a mere 99¢. More details to follow.

– In other news (and these are the reasons I’ve been so busy), I’m waiting on the approval draft of “The Rememberists” for Daily Science Fiction, I’ve gotten a commitment from Baen on “Bumped” if I make some revisions, and I’ve completed the first draft of “The Commuter” for the Baen Fantasy Adventure Short Story competition. For Stealth Books, I’ve also reviewed and blurbed Graham Brown’s latest SF masterpiece, and I’m working through John Monteith’s latest Rogue sub-thriller. On top of that, I’m still working on the ASID tabletop game and app with Nathaniel Torson of Jabberwocky Media. Then there’s life (Don’t Talk To Me About LIFE . . . .) where my brave, strong, and beautiful wife keeps kickin’ cancer’s ass and staying busy, and my three kids are ALL in baseball and softball, each of which have both simultaneous and consecutive games in different locations. Plus work at my unspecified Day Job, which eats about 14-16 hours a day.

– What this means is, I have not yet made progress on Lancers Into the Light or on Co-Pilot, but I pledge to! Soon(ish)!!

– Congrats to Ancillary Justice for winning the Nebula! I gotta read that one to see what all the hubbub is about. Best of luck to it and all the upcoming Hugo nominees, though I’m pulling for a Larry Correia and a Brad Torgerson win.

– Final note about goings on, I got to spend an afternoon with Chris Kennedy, author of Janissaries and When the Gods Aren’t Gods, at the Virginia Beach Central Public Library’s AMAZING event devoted to their new Local Author collection. It was a pleasure to donate books both for the collection and to circulate, as well as to meet so many great local authors and small press publishers. A good time was had by all and I really look forward to doing it again next year. If you live in the Hampton Roads area, I urge you to go and check out ALL the books!

– And that’s about it. I obviously don’t understand the concept behind brief, bulletized statements. I have a problem. Pity me!

Just who is this guy?

Thomas Allen Mays is the Improbable Author of "A Sword Into Darkness", "Demigod", "Lancers Into The Light", and numerous short stories here on the web, such as "Strategic Deployment", "Dreams for Sale -- Two Bits!", "The Rememberists", "Bumped", "Within This Horizon" and others.
When he's not writing, he works on the east coast, Somewhere Unspecified, doing Something For The Navy. He plans not to dwell on it here, but they'll probably have to resurrect Robert Mitchum or Gregory Peck to play him in a movie, because Tom Cruise just doesn't have the gravitas. What he prefers to do with his time, however, is play with his three beautiful kids his rambunctious mutt, or avoid working on the lawn.